Download Lesson 10 Jellyfish

Jellies
The Life of a Jellyfish
by Twig C. George
If you were a jellyfish you would have two choices - to go up or to go down.
That’s it. Two. You would not have a brain, so you could not decide what to have for
breakfast or where to go for lunch.
The ocean currents would carry you along from place to place. In this way you
could travel hundreds of miles. Food might pass by you and get caught in your
tentacles. Or not.
Sea turtles, dolphins, and whale sharks would try to eat you. You wouldn’t worry
about it because you couldn’t. You would just float on.
You would protect yourself with millions of tiny, mechanical cells that, when
touched by another animal, release a chemical and sting. Like a bow and arrow. You
would not know if you were stinging a friend or an enemy. You would not even know
what a friend or an enemy was!
Jellyfish sting for protection and to catch food. That’s all. They don’t hunt and
they can’t chase. They just bump and sting. Bump and sting.
Some jellyfish sting gently. Some jellyfish have a sting so powerful that they are
more dangerous than a cobra. These are the Australian box jellies.
Jellyfish are so simple that they look like plastic trash floating in the sea. When
an animal eats a jellyfish it stays healthy and strong. When an animal eats plastic it
gets weaker and weaker and eventually dies.
Some jellyfish lie on the shallow bottom in clear, warm seas and grow their own
food. These are called upside-down jellyfish. Once they have eaten small bits of algae,
just once, they can grow more inside their bodies by sitting in the sun. They are their
own greenhouses and grocery stores all wrapped up in one.
To be a jellyfish you need to be shaped like a bell, with at least one mouth, and
tentacles. Many animals called jellyfish are really something else. The Portuguese
man-of-war is not a real jellyfish. It has an air-filled bubble instead of water-filled bell.
Jellyfish are almost all water and a little protein. They look slimy and disgusting
when they wash up on the beach.
In the sea, jellyfish are beautiful. There are jellyfish as big as basketballs with
long red tentacles called West Coast sea nettles.
There are tiny, elegant jellyfish that look like a blizzard of snowflakes.
There are jellyfish that grow so big that they are as long as a blue whale. They
are called Arctic lion’s mane jellyfish. They pulse and drift. They eat and reproduce.
They live and die. All without a brain or a heart.
Someday you might be very lucky and see an ocean full of jellyfish. And, since
you have a brain and a heart, you would know you were seeing something
unforgettable.